Peter and Polly;

Chapter I

IT was the autumn of 1775, and the pale sunlight of the Indian summer gave a yellow tinge to the dry russet leaves yet clinging to the boughs of the giant oak that overshadowed the old Austin homestead, a substantial dwelling-house in a pleasant village in Massachusetts.

It was a hospitable, comfortable-seeming home, with two stories in front, and a “ lean-to” roof, reaching groundward, in the rear, while a queer, bird-house-like porch sheltered the front door, that now swung open, letting the wind blow in the withered leaves. The sitting-

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room within was, as well, a cheery, home-like place, where a tall clock, with elaborate brass ornaments, stood in one corner, and, loudly ticking, told the flight of time ; and where, in the fireplace, set round with gayly painted tiles, after the Dutch fashion, a fire of green ash was burning, that filled the air with the faint fragrance of its scented flames.

The room was strewn with articles of wearing-apparel for all seasons,* while over the narrow winding stairs that led to the chambers above, ascending and descending like the angels of Jacob’s ladder, little Peter and Polly Austin were constantly passing, busily making preparations for a long journey, and a lengthy stay with some unknown relatives in New Hampshire.

They were twins, and had just reached the sweet years of indiscretion, being now thirteen, — an age for them the more perilous, because, having lost their mother by death the year previous, they had now been compelled to part

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with their father, a young physician, who, having received a commission in the new Colonial Army, had, three days before, ridden away to report himself at Cambridge, bidding them “ go'od by ” with tearful eyes, not knowing when he should return. He had not left, however, without making every arrangement he deemed possible for the care of his children during his absence, a subject which had caused him great anxiety. A worthy middleaged couple, who had lately come to the place from Charlestown, where, in the stirring days of June, their house had been burned by British fire, and the man’s right hand been partially disabled by a random shot, had already found shelter under his roof, and were grateful to accept the care of his land and buildings while he should be away. But, though excellent persons in their place, they were scarcely those to whom the watchful father cared to intrust the guidance of his thoughtful son and of his daring little Polly ; and it was with a

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sense of relief that he received an unexpected letter from his sister Nancy, who resided in a small but thrifty township in New Hampshire, saying that three men from her vicinity were shortly to be in his neighborhood on business, and “ if, as a patriot should, he intended to enter the army, she trusted he would allow his children to be sent, in their company, to her home, where, until his return, she would watch over them with all of a Christian’s faithfulness and all of a mother’s love.”

“ Tut ! tut ! tut ! ” said Dr. Austin, on reading this epistle ; “ Nancy promises too much.” Yet, notwithstanding, his heart, always sensitive to kindness, warmed, as he read, toward the almost stranger sister whom he had only seen for a few brief times since her marriag?, when he was but a boy himself. He recalled, with brotherly pride, the many tributes to her beauty and grace to which he had listened, and remembering with pleasure that her husband, whom he had met but twice, had, on

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those occasions, shown himself to have the manners of a gentleman, and that he was, moreover, spoken of by those that knew him better than himself as a person of character and position, as well as wealth, he gratefully concluded at once to accept the invitation, not even thinking, after the manner of parents of to-day, of consulting beforehand the wishes and opinions of two human fledglings of thirteen.

The three men foretold had in due time appeared, and, all excitement at the thought of going with them next morning, a new sense of self-consequence half consoling them for their father’s departure, Peter and Polly, this bright November afternoon, gathered together their trinkets and treasures, anxious to carry as many as possible away with them.

“ But you must leave most of them behind,” forewarned Mrs. Ellis, the housekeeper from Charlestown ; “ all your luggage, big and little, you must get into those two bags.” And

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she pointed to two long sacks, woven of coarse green and red yarn, with leather tops and bottoms, which stood partially filled upon the floor.

“ Peter won’t need,” said Polly, “ as much room for his things as I shall for mine. I must get in all my best clothes.” For Polly was, at this time, a practical negative answer to the prophet’s inquiry, “ Can a maid forget her ornaments ? ” “ There are my short gowns and

my red stuffed petticoat, and my neckerchiefs, and my tuckers, and my best long gown, and — ”

“ And what now ? ” broke forth Peter, indignantly interrupting his sister’s inventory. “ I suppose you think you can have the filling of both bags yourself; but there are my Caesar and Virgil, and my Dictionary and Grammar, and my Introduction to the Making of Latin ! Father said they must be carried, and if Aunt Nancy knows a minister, or any other fit man, I shall be sent to him to be taught.” For, if Polly was vain of her girlish

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II finery, Peter was equally so of his reputation as a scholar, for his quickness in regard to books had already made his friends foresee for him college honors, and the then thrice-coveted laurels of a “ learned man ” ; while Polly, though a ready reader of anything akin to stories, of which, either written or told, she was passionately fond, was by no means inclined to hard study. She was not even yet quite perfect in the Catechism ; her spelling was always original, and her “ pothooks ” were the most forlorn of their species, though much good paper and many goose-quills she had ruined in following the copies given her at the village “ reading and writing school.”

“But those Latin books, and the sum-book, and the Psalter and the Catechism, and the Bible with the letter in it that we must give Cousin Keziah Hapgood, if she is living near Aunt Nancy, are all the books we can take ; so you may as well put those two * World Displayeds’ back on the shelf.”

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“Yes, indeed!” confirmed Mrs. Ellis, authoritatively ; “ there is no room for them in the bags ; and, if there were, books are too costly things for you to be carrying round the country, and, ten to one, losing in the end. I ’ve heard your father say he paid twenty-six pounds for that set of books, and that ’s a great price to give for something you can’t eat, nor drink, nor wear. Put them up, Peter.”

Peter obeyed promptly, like one who had learned to mind what he was told, and replaced the books, with a sigh, in the small mahogany “buffet,” that contained what was then a valuable and expensive library. It was made up chiefly, after the fashion of the day, of those theological works and printed sermons which the children of the Puritans seemed to take such delight in perusing. Controversial statements regarding the “ Order of the Churches,” the “ Rise of Antinomianism,” and the “ New Light Ministry,” “ Election Sermons,” and, vastly different, “ Sermons on

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Election,” mournful funeral discourses, and sentimental wedding ones, with a sweetness caught from Solomon’s Song, all were there ; but it was to the lowest of the small shelves of the buffet that Peter’s eyes turned with longing regret. There were gathered what he deemed his treasures ; a stout edition of Shakespeare, a well-worn “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a less prized “Paradise Lost,” which, after all, was not unvalued by the reflective lad, who had never owned a child’s or a young person’s book in his life, and who, shut in to them as he had been, for lack of other reading, had found in each of these volumes a voiceless friend, all the dearer because he realized that what was best in them lay just beyond his reach, and that to-morrow would give new meaning to what he had learned to-day. “ Midsummer Night’s Dream ” was, to Polly and himself, the most charming of fairy tales; “ Macbeth,” an unfailing source of delightful horrors as a ghost-story ; Milton’s warlike an-

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gels, well-matched foes who fought bravely ; and Bunyan’s Pilgrim, as real an existence as the Pilgrim Fathers. But the “World Displayed,” in twenty diminutive volumes, with brown covers, filled with pictures of scenes in foreign lands, was most precious of all. It was, as the title said, “ a curious collection of travels ” ; and Peter and Polly, who, in body, had scarcely been beyond their native town, had, in soul, with these old voyagers, been round and round the world, searching for Prester John, discovering the East Indies, setting up the cross of conquest on palmy isles, watching the glittering icebergs on the Arctic Sea, sitting in Hottentot huts, or roaming through gold-decked palaces.

To leave these books behind, was to Peter a sore trial ; and as he replaced on the shelf the two volumes he had especially chosen to take with him, even Polly’s heart was softened by the sight of his disconsolate face.

“ There is one comfort, Peter,” she said ;

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“ there is no make-believe in our going to New Hampshire. We ’ve always wanted to travel, and I can’t help wishing, if we could get out of it safely, that we might meet a squad of British soldiers, or some roaming Indians, or a cross bear and some cubs, or anything of that kind, so as to have some adventures on the road.”

“ You want to see cross bears ? ” said Peter, contemptuously. “You, who are afraid of your shadow ! ”

“ O, yes, I ’m afraid at the time,” returned Polly, nothing daunted ; “ but dangers, when they are well over, are such charming things to talk about.”

Next to having fine clothes, to be the heroine of hair-breadth escapes, was, just then, the dearest object of Polly’s ambition. “As for filling the bags,” she resumed —

“ About that,” said Mrs. Ellis, “ there need be no disputing between you ; I will attend to the packing myself ; and, Polly, when you

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are gone, I hope you will work on your sampler, and be sure and take your stitches even, so as not to have to do them over. There has been silk enough, now, picked out of it to make another good one, and it ’s a pity to waste materials in times like these.”

Polly flushed ; her sampler was a sore subject. She had commenced it with the thought that it would prove a marvel of its kind, as indeed it had. It was a long square of yellowbrown canvas, surrounded, on three sides, with a wreath where fruit and flowers and birds were mingled ; while underneath, trees, buildings, and beasts, such as “ never were by sea or shore,” were wrought in manycolored silks ; but, alas ! Polly, not content with regular patterns, had ventured to draw upon her imagination for designs, with most unsatisfactory results. Even the central verse, the only thing in which she had not sought to be original, for, with slight variations, it was the standard one of the time for the purpose,

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“Polly Austin is my name,

America my nation;

Massachusetts is my State,

And Christ is my Salvation,”

was as sorry a specimen of needlework as of poetry.

“ It was,” thought Polly, " exceedingly cruel in Mrs. Ellis to allude to this sampler before Peter ” ; whose brotherly comments on her fancy-work were wont to be more frank than agreeable ; so, starting up, “ If we are going to the graveyard, we may as well go now,” she said.

The “ graveyard ” was a small, stone-walled enclosure, on one side of the “ meeting,” as the meeting-house itself was often called, treeless, except a growth of wild cherry along its edges, and one young elm, that waved over what Polly styled “ the black corner,” where the village negroes were buried. Many of the graves were unmarked ; but what stones there were, were rich . in epitaphs, from the long i8

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Latin inscription over the minister’s resting-place to the odd rhymes on the humbler headstones of the flock. Without staying to read them again, Polly knew every verse there. She had spelled , them out Sunday noons in summer, when, between morning and afternoon services, she had rambled among the graves, and fed the brown sparrows with the crumbs of her luncheon.

“ A Pious Soul, on wings of Love,

And Feathers of an Holy Dove,

He bid this weary world Adieu And wisely up to Heaven flew.”

“ She was kind to all, She seemed contented,

She lived beloved and Died lamented.”

“ Reader

Behold as you pass by as You are now Soe,

Once was I as I am Now Soe You Must be Prepare for Death . and Follow me.”,

It had never occurred to Polly that there

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was anything in stanzas like these to awaken a smile. The graveyard was, to her, a very awful place, that still had a certain fascination that made her like to visit it, with her little schoolmates or with Peter; but nothing could have persuaded her to enter there alone.

The ground all around the place was completely covered by a close network of running blackberry-vines, still beautiful, and in many places green, after the sharp October frosts, but catching and clinging unmercifully as the children passed through them to the farther end, where their mother slept peacefully by two little Timothies and a small Miranda, infant children, whose resting-place was marked by three small black stones, adorned by curiously carved and exceedingly ill-visaged cherubs. Polly stooped down and laid her hand, as if for “farewell,” tenderly upon her mother’s grave, while Peter stood by in true awkward boy -fashion, feeling that a last visit to such a place was a time when it would be

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proper to do or say something, and not knowing what.

“ Polly ! ” he said at last, taking out of his breeches-pocket a carefully folded square of paper, “ I think here would be a good place to read this over again.”

He found, near by, a little space of grass free from the thorny vines, and the two children sat down, their arms around each other, to read together their father’s farewell letter.

My dear Children: As, by the Providence of God and the Need of my Country, I am Now called to Part with You for a Season, I leave behind a few Words of Counsel, that, when I am Away, may serve to remind You Both of your Father and your Duty. You are now going to Reside for the Present in what is to you a Strange Place, and where I have No Friends to whose Care I can Commend you, save my Sister and Her Husband, unless it may Prove so that Miss Keziah Hapgood, that Excellent Cousin of your Mother, and Doubly Dear for Her Sake, may still be

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living somewhere in the neighborhood of your Aunt.

As you will, therefore, be thrown among Stran- _ gers, I Hope that your Conduct will be Discreet even beyond Your Years. Let Your Behaviour to your Elders be marked by Docility, Reverence, and Obedience to Instruction. In company, Avoid alike a Pert and Forward Demeanor and a Sullen, Silent one. Be Emulous without Envy, Kind without Servility, and by Patience, Forbearance, and Truthfulness, merit the Reward of an approving Conscience, however the World may Regard you.

As Concerns the Cultivation and Improvement of your Minds, I have written to your Uncle to Procure, for Peter, a Master in Latin and Greek, that He may be properly fitted for College, and to give Polly as good Schooling as lies in his Power to Bestow ; but, as I fear that, at Present, you will have few Opportunities for Reading, therefore I trust you will the more Carefully peruse whatever Good Books you may be able to Obtain and think over Attentively what You have Read,

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so if not Able to Learn all I could wish, You will be constantly Adding something to your Store of Knowledge.

Finally, never Forget your Mother’s Counsels, nor Cease to give Good Attention to Reading the Bible and to Prayer, for, without God’s Blessing, we can never be Happy in this World or Reign in the Next.

Whether it may be the Design of an All-Wise Providence to Return me to You again, or whether, for the Last Time, I have Looked upon You, May you ever Remember me with True Affection, Knowing my Highest Wish is for your Prosperity, and my constant Prayer that you may be Useful on Earth and Blessed in Eternitie.

Your loving Father,

Peter Austin.

Polly took out her blue-bordered handkerchief and wiped her eyes ; she was not ashamed to have even Peter see her tears, they seemed so poor a tribute of her sorrow for her fathers absence. “ If she could only

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E TER AND POLLY. 23 see him,” she thought, “ and tell him howmuch she loved him, and how good and faithful she meant to be.”

She rose, and as she did so Peter laid his hand gently upon her arm. “There is one thing, Polly ! ” he said, “ that I have been thinking about, and that is, you and I have got to be all the family of us there is, now, and if you will stick by me, I will stick by you ; won’t you, Polly ? ”

“Stick by you?” said Polly; “yes, Peter, through thick and thin, whatever comes ! — but, don’t you think we should be happier if we did n’t tease each other quite so much ; if I should give up calling you 'Book-worm/ and you should have a little less to say about my clothes ? ”

“ Yes,” said Peter, “ we should : I don’t like teasing any better than you do ; but, about your clothes, you ar'e too riggish, Polly.”

“ Well, if I ’m riggish, you ’re priggish,” retorted Polly. “ If I were a boy, I would n’t

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sit down with my cue half braided, and my nose in an old Latin book, as you will.”

Just then a magnificent golden flicker, lingering when his mates were flown, lighted on one of the cherry-trees near, and watching the gleam of his wings the children forgot the dispute fast arising out of their resolutions to be peaceful and considerate.

Chapter II

UP in the morning, fluttering and twittering like a swallow making ready for flight, was Polly, before the cocks had begun to crow or the stars grow dim by the pale light of the pretty green candle colored with bay berry-wax, making herself fine before the little looking-glass, quite as anxious as to her appearance as would become a bride on her wedding morning ; for “ to-day,” thought Polly, “my path will take a new turn.”

Good or ill, dark or bright, an untried existence lay before her. Far away in more newly settled New Hampshire, who knew what strange adventures might befall her ? Her head was full of Indian stories, which made

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up half of the old women’s talk in those days, and all she knew of the locality to which she was going was, that it was a township not far from the place where, some seventyeight years before, the lion-hearted Mrs. Dustin had fled from her tormentors, with a string of Indian scalps. That was long, long before, and tomahawks were not to Polly’s taste ; but she had also listened breathless to the story of the fair Mrs. Howe, the “ beautiful captive ” who, only twenty years before, had been carried from Hinsdale, New Hampshire, and sold to the French in Canada ; and of a little Rachel Meloon, who had been borne away from Salisbury, and, after dwelling nine years with the savages in their wigwams, had been brought back to her friends, an Indian at heart, singing their songs and speaking their tongue, and sorrowing, wherever she went, for her dusky friends of the forest. Reckless Polly, looking in the mirror at the earnest, glowing little face it showed,

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felt, as she had said, that “if she and Peter only came safely through, she was quite ready for anything” ; the more excitement the better ; for she had quite as wild a love for adventure as if she had been brought up on dime novels instead of the “Assembly’s Catechism.”

“If anything should happen,” thought Polly, “it is a good thing to be looking your best; then if people get into trouble they have something to help themselves out.”

She stooped just then to buckle her shoe. Certainly, her feet were something to be proud of, so slender and shapely, with such finely turned ankles, such daintily arched insteps ; “ it was quite a pleasure to look at them,” Polly thought ; and, if any one knew, she ought, for she had often taken pleasure in mounting a high chair for the sake of a peep at them, in the little bedroom mirror. But this morning she was less satisfied with their looks than she was wont, for the stockings

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which Mrs. Ellis had laid by for her to put on were of gray woollen yarn, not the finest, and now that they were on, she saw that the legs were too large, and “bagged” about the ankles. This was an affliction indeed. Polly caught just that instant a glimpse of a little pair of white silk stockings with lovely clocks, which lay in the unclosed top of one of the bags. She looked at them with longing eyes. “ The soul that hesitates is lost.” “ There is plenty of time, and no harm in just trying them on,” she thought ; and drawing them up very straightly with her garters close tied, they looked even prettier than she had expected when she pulled off the others; so much so, that she could not help rolling up the gray woollen ones in a ball, and stuffing them as far as she could beneath the other contents of the bag. When she had done this, had it not been for a certain restless pricking of her conscience, she would have felt quite satisfied, the rest of the clothes provided for her to ride

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in being, in truth, quite too good for the occasion ; for Mrs. Ellis, who, since her coming to the house, had taken charge of her wardrobe, had shared fully in her love of dress, — perhaps, indeed, was the chief cause of it by her injudicious conversation. She, in her maiden days, had been a seamstress in great Boston, and all her talk now was of the men and women of fashion she had seen in the fine houses there: bewitching gallants dressed, for great dinners, in peach-blossom velvet trimmed with silver-lace ; matrons with plumed heads, like crested cockatoos ; and fair young maidens, in “ raiment of wrought needlework,” with love-locks on their foreheads and roses on their breasts.

Dr. Austin was free-hearted and indulgent, and Mrs. Ellis, in assuming the care of Polly’s outfit, had made it, for “a growing girl,” almost an extravagant one. The gown the little girl was to wear to-day was of imported worsted damask, re-dyed black for Polly to

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wear as mourning for her mother ; but her cloak, which had been made with a thought of long-continued future use, was of scarlet broadcloth trimmed with sable fur, and her best gown, also of worsted damask, was blue and white, and flowered with red.

“Very fine indeed,” Polly thought, and calculated to make an impression on all beholders. Even her ambition, in regard to her prospective appearance, was satisfied as to her clothes. Polly’s careless spirits, however, all vanished, when, just as her toilet was completed, she clasped around her throat the little mourning-necklace which her father had given her, according to the custom of the time, at her mother’s funeral. The memento, thoughtlessly worn till then, now that she was to leave all the scenes with which she was familiar, brought back to her thought so many tender memories, that the quick tears sprang at once to her blue eyes. She was fairly sobbing when Mrs. Ellis opened the door. “ What ! home-

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sick before you start ? That will never do ! ” she said ; “ keep up your spirits ; • you have a long journey before you, and, if you get hungry, you can eat, as you ride, one of the honey-cakes I shall put in your pocket.”

The three men who were to bear the twins away rode up to the door in good season, mounted and ready to depart. Before they came, Polly had tried to give her thoughts of them a romantic coloring ; but Peter had said, “ They must be three cowardly loons, else they would not have come all the way from New Hampshire with no thought of joining the army.”

When she came to start, Polly found, to her dismay, that Peter was to “sit double” with the youngest and handsomest rider, and the owner of the best horse, and was to keep in advance of the rest of the party ; the next most attractive stranger, as far as she could discern, in the gray light, for it was scarcely morning when they came, was to ride with the

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saddle-bags ; while she, of course, fell to the last of the three, and was to sit on a pillion behind him.

It was not a pretty pillion. Almost dark as it was, Polly could see the feathers, with which it w'as stuffed, looking out through its worn covering. It was an old bony horse, and the rider was worst of all. Polly’s vain little heart failed her as Mr. Ellis lifted her to the seat behind him. “ Good by ! and don’t let Peter spoil his satin breeches,” called Mrs. Ellis ; and that was her last farewell.

Polly waved one hand, while with the other she clung to the man in front, and the tears ran down her cheeks. The growing day, that showed her companion more plainly, did not, alas ! lend him attractions, — a man of fifty, wrinkled, cross-eyed, and ill shaven ; his hair combed back and braided in a cue, tied round with a piece of eel-skin and plentifully powdered, which was his only attention to dress as a fine art ; his coat, of poorly woven home-

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spun, badly cut and worse made ; his breeches and long waistcoat of buckskin, old and blackened in places ; his cocked hat, which had seen hard service, much the worse for wear ; while, sure signs of a sloven, there were marks of candle-drippings on his sleeve, sprinklings of hair-powder on his shoulders, and scatterings of snuff on the dingy ruffle of his shirt.

Polly, who was not accustomed to “judging righteous judgment,” but to rating people by outside show, was more and more prejudiced against him as they jogged along ; for in addition to his untidy looks, he paid no more attention to her than if she had been a sack of meal laid on behind him.

Why should he ? One little girl was not of much account to him. He was the father of fourteen children, and, though the eldest of them were now grown, by a second marriage to a widow with five he had made his house so full of little folks, that, when he had a chance to be quiet, he was glad enough to

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embrace it. In truth, his heart to-day was too heavy to say much. Mr. Burbean, for that was his name, was not of the stuff that patriots are made of, and the call of Freedom woke in him no very ardent response. But he was an honest, well-meaning man, and a kind father and husband, and he knew what war was better than Polly did. By and by he began to mutter to himself, quite unconscious of a listener. “ There’s a hard time coming, there’s a hard time coming,” he repeated. “ Breadstuffs will be high, and cattle will/be

t

scarce, and the border Injuns will be all hawkin’ round, and the paper-money — Little girl ! ” he said, suddenly remembering her, and turning round so quickly that Polly was nearly startled off her seat, — “ little girl ! do you know how long your father thinks this war is going to last ? ”